Hello from Canader

[Anonymous]

#4168

Hi everyone,Thought I'd introduce myself....My name is Al Gill, and I'm an expat Oz who has lived in Edmonton Canada for 22 plus years, working in the oil and gas industry as a management person of sorts......I have owned a 2007 R1200GS for 3 years having sold my 04 R1100s to my son. I also have a quirky half arsed collection of bikes, with the oldest being a 1948 Francis Barnett and a few others.I am prepared to help anyone in NZ who may need parts for an obscure old Bike or even a newer BMW. I have a very larger bike wrecker 20 minutes west of my home and they have some incredible bikes just laying in a field, and thousands of bits for all manner of old bikes, at dirt cheap prices (4 Kawasaki H1 mufflers for $200) as an example. I have a daughter in Auckland so now spend quite a lot of time in NZ and am shipping my GS down in December to use to see the rest of NZ in the next few years.........soooo, if anyone needs any parts I will have room in the crate for a quantity of bits and pieces if anyone needs anything.I also have a pair of GS wheels off my bike (07 spoked silver) that I want to sell in decent condition for about $400 each and I'll just throw them in the crate, if anyone is interested, pay me when you see the wheels. Just let me know if you want anything and I will be happy to try to help.....Maybe I'll catch up with a few of you somewhere on the roads early next year.....Al Gill

[Anonymous]

#17270

Welcome, Al,Nice to have you onboard our Forum. Gotta say it threw me when I saw your screen name and found, when I checked, that your address was in Canada.Fortunately you are a legend in your own lunchbox, and references to you all over the internet, so I had no trouble working out that you were not one of the cyber-varmints that are forever trying to join us. And now we all know that you are expat Oz-flaming-stralian, it all makes perfect sense.

[Anonymous]

#17271

G,day Al,welcome to the forum,you will find a good friendly bunch of guys here who ride a wide range of beemers and other marques, and you will not have any problem at all finding a group to ride with On any Sunday whether it be the serious off road stuff or just plain old social ride to lunch .

[Mark Mackay]

#17272

Hi Al ,Are Your wheels wire spoked or Alloy?Look forward to see You on one of our club rides.Cheers Richard

[Anonymous]

#17273

Wheels are spoked, with front discs and mount bolts only – but no mount washers/spacers.No rear mounting studs.I bought new black fancy-dancy wheels and the silver originals are excess and I really don't need any more stuff in my garage......Soon my wife's car wont fit, and the day that happens I'm dead, real dead........and the lawyers, detectives and insurance company vultures will be picking over my bones and burnt bikes for years...... 😉 😉 😉 😉 😉Thanks everyone for the welcome...certainly any time I have been out riding in NZ on our past trips [even if it was on my son-in-laws Suzuki 900] riders stopped and chatted and made me feel very welcome........I cant wait to get there, but I have to endure another freezin' freakin' winter first......

[Dave Ross]

#17274

I like you sig line, OZ-slider. But I've got to say, the secret is in the timing.

[Mark Mackay]

#17275

Hi Al ,Put them in the crate I will take them,they can be My xmas present.now I will have to find some semi off road tyres.

[Anonymous]

#17276

Wheels will be in the crate with the bike. I'm also going to throw in a few other bits and pieces I have such as a spare GS windshield and a few other things.No obligation on the wheels, if you like them when you see them then we can haggle to your advantage.BTW the Oz Slider moniker is from my dirt track days as is obvious from the avatar.......Funny story that when I emigrated to Canada I wanted to try ice racing, as I used the classic red neck line of "How hard can it be".....Well as usual the good guys made it look easy so I went out and bought a Suzuki 250 and went to the hardware store and bought a bunch of sheet metal screws and took to the tyres one Saturday morning with a battery drill. Mission accomplished, I went to bed early in anticipation of a three hour drive to Sylvan Lake for my first Pro ice race.Loaded up early the next morning and pulled on every piece of warm clothing I owned, plus my dirt track leathers, winter boots, balaclava, hot choccie and a ton of other crap (just in case of course) and headed to the lake. My first shock was that I had to drive onto the lake and that involved much slipping and sliding as the lake surface of about 3 feet of blue ice was burnished from a week of high winds which also piled all the snow up where the track had been marked out, so by the time the big CAT grader had been around the snow banks were 5' high and it was like riding in a drain......but I get ahead of myself somewhat...........I was in the first practice session so after wringing myself into a lather trying to get the f$&@98$&)(; Suzuki running in the -25 temperatures, I tried to get going onto the track but wondered why the freakin' bike wouldn't move......much to my disgust the back wheel was madly spinning around but forward progress was impeded by the sheet metal screws not having any edge to bite into the blue ice, so it was pretty obvious that I had wasted Saturday and wasn't doing much racing as I knew it that day.Well another racer had been watching all this with barely concealed mirth and I guess he felt sorry for me as I clearly wasn't going to be much competition for him that day, so he brought me a box of the proper screws and a hand bit and showed me how to insert the screws to provide the proper traction....An hour later and with no practice I was out in the first race for the flat track pro's....holy crap I pulled the holeshot and flung it into the first corner speedway style and proceeded to throw it away in front of a pack of 20 superstars on flat trackers with shaved tyres and big bloody screws poking out behind cheap tin and plastic guards that were more dangerous than the screws themselves.....Through a mist of ice chips and flying plastic parts and assorted Rm250 bits and pieces I mounted the aforementioned snow bank in an approximate Canada Goose imitation that wasn't anything like the classic 'flying W'one hears about ....it was more like a rotating mass of scared and frozen leather, flesh and down jacket with bits already missing from the close encounter with a few ice studs a hundred feet or so back up the track. This was not going to end well, particularly as the very few spectators were all parked around the outside of the (did I mention the 5' snow bank) track hunkered down behind the bloody snowbank hiding from the wind.As I rotated through the air I seemed to actually accelerate up the bank and for a split second wondered where the bike was, but with the approaching assortment of cars and vans assuming a significant presence, the bike's whereabouts really didn't matter.By the good graces of the motorcycling gods and sheer ballsy luck and minimal skill, I flew between a van and a pickup truck and landed behind the spectator row in what was obviously the lineup for the hot dog wagon.....every time I run into Errol Erickson ( the racer who loaned me the screws) he always reminds me about the day I scored a ten-pin bowling maximum when I cleaned out the entire line of people waiting for their 'dog......Here beginneth my bike racing adventures in Canada, which Im sure my wife would suggest was really just an extension of my (mis)adventures on bikes in Oz.........Al Gill

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